Coached to Death

by Victoria Laurie

  Gilley switched photos again and used his fingers to enlarge the photo of Joyce at the luncheon. “Ohmigod, Cat! Look!”

  “The punch bowl!” I said. “Gilley, she’s right next to it!”

  “Yes!” he said. “We’ve got her! We’ve got her!”

  “Um, guys?” Sunny said.

  Gilley and I were exchanging high fives when I said, “Yeah?”

  “What exactly do you have?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’m no defense attorney, but my brother is a cop, so I know a little bit about when there’s evidence and when there’s not, and all you have with this photo is proof that someone wearing the same jacket and skirt combo as Joyce attended the luncheon. I’m sure someone will remember seeing her there, but even though in the photo she’s close to the punch bowl, there’s no evidence that she dumped anything into it.”

  I sat down heavily in the chair. “Ohmigod, you’re right,” I said.

  “And I’ve reached the end of Letty’s photos, and there isn’t a single one of Joyce in focus. If I had to guess, I would say that she probably worked pretty hard to avoid the camera lens—assuming she did, in fact, have something to do with the quinine found in the punch.”

  “She did it,” I said adamantly. “I can feel it.”

  “But why?” Sunny asked next. “Why would Joyce want to kill Heather?”

  “Could it be over the death of her daughter?” Gilley asked. “Maybe Heather was there that day and lured Cora into the water or something.”

  “I would say that’s plausible, except that Heather was afraid of deep water. Something about seeing Jaws at an impressionable age. She would never have gone swimming with Cora in the ocean. She didn’t even like the deep end of the swimming pool.”

  “Well, there has to be some reason,” I insisted. “Joyce would’ve been one of the only other people to know about Heather’s severe allergy to quinine.”

  “True, but short of a confession, I don’t know how you’re going to prove it,” Sunny said.

  I sighed. “You’re right. Dammit. And I really thought we had something to take to your brother.”

  Sunny chuckled softly. “Hey, don’t beat yourself up, Catherine. This was some solid detective work, and my brother should be impressed. Do take it to him. Who knows, maybe he’s got some thoughts about trying to provoke a confession out of her. Maybe he can tell her that he’s got photographic evidence of her dumping some quinine into the punch bowl. She wouldn’t know that he doesn’t have it, after all.”

  Gilley’s eyes lit up. “Thanks, Sunny. That’s a great idea,” he said.

  I hung up with Sunny and turned to Gil. “What?” I asked.

  He scrolled to the photo of Joyce at the Art Gala. “I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a whiz with Photoshop.”

  “Why is that relevant?”

  “Give me half an hour,” he said.

  I waited on the couch, my foot tapping, while I watched Gilley work. At last he said, “Got it,” and I jumped up and rushed over to him. He showed me his finished work, and I marveled at it.

  “Whoa,” I said. “She’s caught red-handed!”

  “Yes. I went with the prescription bottle over the tonic water. I figured that dropping a few pills into the punch bowl was probably going to be less conspicuous than hauling out a bottle of tonic water and dumping it into the punch.”

  “That’s a gamble,” I said, looking at the completely doctored image of Joyce, tapping out a few pills into the punch bowl at Heather’s luncheon.

  “It is. If she used tonic water, she’ll know it’s a forgery.”

  “What do we say to Shepherd?”

  “We pretend to have discovered this photo online. He probably won’t check, and he’ll use it to get a confession out of Joyce.”

  I tapped my lip. “Gil, I don’t think we can set him up like that. He’ll have to be told that the photo is a fake; otherwise, we could jeopardize the confession—assuming he could get one. Plus, if he’s going to probe her about the murder, he’ll have to read Joyce her rights, which will alert her to clam up and call her attorney. I think that even with the photo, we risk not getting much of anything out of her if Shepherd takes the lead on this.”

  “Then what do you propose we do?”

  “I think we should have a talk with Joyce someplace public and invite Shepherd. If he’s there, then he’s not exactly questioning her, he’s just overhearing a conversation about a photo we discovered online, and if that conversation happens to be a confession, then he doesn’t have to read Joyce her rights before we start probing.”

  Gilley brightened. “Oooo, I love that idea!”

  I sighed with relief. If Gilley was on board, then my logic might be sound. “Let me call Shepherd and bring him up to speed.”

  Five minutes into our conversation, however, the detective was putting up all sorts of roadblocks. “We’re riding a hairy edge here, you two,” he said through my phone’s speaker. “If I’m involved at all in any part of this, then I’ll have to identify myself and read Joyce her rights; otherwise, her attorney’s going to cry entrapment and get the judge to toss out her confession—assuming, of course, she tells you anything.”

  “But what if you simply overheard the conversation?” Gilley asked. “I mean, if we can coax Joyce to meet us at . . . I don’t know . . . the local coffee shop, somewhere public so she doesn’t suspect too much, and you overheard her confess to Cat, would that be okay?”

  “I’d have to be sitting pretty close to overhear her,” Shepherd said.

  “What if I wore a wire?”

  Shepherd chuckled. “I know you guys think all police detectives have access to sophisticated surveillance equipment, but stuff like that is only relegated to certain precincts in the city.”

  Gilley got up and moved over to the kitchen counter, where he’d set his drone. Picking it up, he said, “What if we came equipped with some sophisticated surveillance equipment of our own?”

  “I don’t follow,” Shepherd said.

  “Gilley’s holding up his drone,” I said to him, directing my next comment to Gilley. “But, Gil, we can’t very well hover that thing above her head.”

  “We don’t have to hover it,” Gilley said. “Your mention about the coffee shop gave me an idea. If we meet Joyce at Sarah’s Coffee Hut, we could hide the drone on one of the bookshelves. That table across from the front window is right next to a stack of shelves with all kinds of clutter on it. If you and Joyce sat there in front of it, I could hide the drone right above you and point the camera and the microphone directly down and capture the entire conversation.”

  “Hey,” Shepherd said, “that’s actually not a bad idea.”

  “The detective and I wouldn’t even have to be in the coffee shop for us to observe you,” Gilley continued. “We could be in the sub shop next door and hear everything going on. That way, Joyce wouldn’t be spooked if she looked around the shop and saw an East Hampton detective sitting nearby.”

  “That’s perfect!” I said. “And, Detective, you wouldn’t have to meet Gilley in any official capacity; that way, you’re steering clear of the Miranda warning and simply observing a conversation Gilley happens to be capturing on his iPad.”

  There was a protracted silence on Shepherd’s end of the line. Finally, he said, “Let’s do it.”

  And we were off to the races.

  * * *

  The first problem we ran into, of course, was how to contact Joyce and get her to agree to meet with us. We had no way of directly contacting her. We had had control of her Facebook page for several days, and she either didn’t check it very often or hadn’t reported that it’d been hacked. So the first thing we did was to switch it back to her password, and then, instead of sending her an e-mail through social media (which would’ve immediately identified us), Gilley made a suggestion that I wasn’t exactly thrilled with. “Her address is listed online,” he said. “Why don’t we just go to her house and lea
ve a note on her doormat asking her to meet you at Sarah’s?”

  “Why don’t we just knock and ask her?” I said.

  Gilley shook his head. “She’d want to know why you want to talk to her, and that would lead to a discussion, which would end in accusations and no ability to record the conversation. No, I think a nice cryptic note will do the trick. Especially if she’s guilty.”

  Intrigued, I said, “What should the note say?”

  Gil tapped his lip. “It should say . . . I know what you did. Meet me at Sarah’s tomorrow at noon or I’ll tell everyone.”

  “I know what you did?” I repeated. “That’s it?”

  “I said it’d be cryptic.”

  “Do you think that’s enough?”

  “If she’s guilty? Absolutely.”

  “Hmm,” I said, trying to put myself in Joyce’s shoes. “Yeah. I think that if I’d poisoned Heather and I got a note like that on my doormat, I’d show up at the designated coffee shop. Okay. Let’s go with that.”

  Gilley beamed. “We’ll deliver the note tonight at midnight.”

  “Midnight? Why so late?”

  “To make sure she’s asleep.”

  “I’ll be asleep at midnight,” I said wearily. It’d been a long day already. “Also, why do we need to wait until she’s asleep? Why can’t we just leave it on her doorstep and ring her doorbell to make sure she sees the note. I mean, she could miss the note for days if she uses the garage.”

  “Good point,” Gilley said. “Fine. We’ll go together after dinner and give her the old ding-dong ditch.”

  Later that night, Gilley and I arrived back at Chez Kitty giggly with excitement. Gilley had been the brave soul to creep up to Joyce’s house—a picturesque cottage on a gorgeous bluff overlooking the ocean—and leave the note. He then rang the doorbell and scurried back toward the car, which I’d parked down the street next to a row of evergreens. He’d scrambled inside just as Joyce opened her front door. Through the cover of the trees, we watched the elderly woman bend low to retrieve the envelope on her front mat. She stood there, leaning on her cane for a long moment, staring at the note inside before lifting her chin to look around suspiciously. Her gaze never settled on us, however, which proved that the cover of the trees and the darkness of the evening were enough to hide us from view.

  I waited an extra ten minutes after she finally closed the door to start the engine and back down the road a bit, before making a U-turn and heading home.

  “Do you think she’ll take the bait?” I asked Gilley, who’d been silent since getting in the car.

  “I do,” he said. “She’s guilty, Cat.”

  “I hope you’re right, Gil. Otherwise, we’ve got no leads and no one new to accuse.”

  * * *

  The next day at a few minutes before ten, I walked into Sarah’s and was immediately dismayed. A woman with flaming red hair was seated in the spot right below Gilley’s drone. (He’d placed it there during the morning rush, the better to inconspicuously hide it.)

  Looking around to see if another table might do, I quickly dismissed the idea. The table across from the window was the best seat in the house for our plan.

  I approached the woman—who was engrossed in a book—with what I hoped was a pleasant, conciliatory expression and a somewhat elaborate but I hoped also believable excuse. “Pardon me,” I said, smiling when she looked up, “I’m so sorry to trouble you, but I have a nervous condition that makes me extremely anxious in public spaces. I’m meeting my aunt here today for coffee, and this is the only table I’ve ever felt calm sitting in. Would it be a terrible inconvenience to ask if I might have your table? I wouldn’t ask, except that I’m already feeling a bit anxious, and I’m trying very hard to avoid a panic attack.”

  The woman smiled pleasantly. “Of course,” she said gently. “I suffer from anxiety too.”

  “Oh, thank you!” I beamed.

  She smiled as she gathered her things and stood. Pointing to the table in front of the one I needed to sit at, she said, “All right if I sit there? I like to be against the wall. It helps me feel safe too.”

  Inwardly I groaned. I didn’t want her to overhear my conversation with Joyce, but I couldn’t really say no. Noting that she had been engrossed in her book, I said, “Of course. And thank you again.”

  “It’s no trouble,” she assured me, and I was so relieved when, after settling at the next table, she donned a set of earbuds and got back to her book.

  Arranging my coat on the chair, I headed to the bar for a cappuccino, then nervously took up my seat at the table, tapping my foot while I waited to see if Joyce would show up.

  I jumped when my phone pinged with an incoming text. You look nervous, read Gilley’s text.

  Duh, I wrote back.

  Well, stop. She’s on her way in.

  Sure enough, the door opened, and in walked Joyce.

  She was an elegant woman, with fine features, long, silver hair that waved with the breeze from the door, and she wore a rose-colored cashmere sweater and gray tweed slacks. Coming through the door, I noticed she limped a little with the cane.

  Once inside, she eyed the café with the same suspicious eye she’d used the night before.

  I almost hated that the gaze would very quickly land on me.

  Gathering my courage, I stood and waved to her. She looked at me quizzically for a moment, and then realization dawned, and she appeared almost resigned. She nodded and pointed to the counter. I understood that she was telling me she wanted to get a beverage before coming to sit down, and I nodded, marveling a little at her bravery. If I’d done what she’d done and was about to confront an accuser, I doubted I’d even bother with coffee.

  I watched while Joyce ordered a frothy coffee drink and a chocolate-chip cookie. She brought both over to the table and said not a word as she set them down, hooked her cane on the back of her chair, and sat down to look at me expectantly.

  “Joyce,” I began.

  “Catherine,” she replied. Snapping off a piece of the cookie, she asked almost casually, “How did you know?”

  “That you murdered Heather?” I said, hoping that it might be that easy to get her to confess.

  Joyce popped the bit of cookie in her mouth and chewed it while she considered me, neither acknowledging nor admitting to my accusation.

  As the silence between us lengthened, I tried to move things along by reaching into my purse and pulling out the doctored photograph of her from the luncheon.

  Joyce paused chewing on the cookie to study the photo. “Who took the picture?” she asked.

  “One of the guests,” I said, relieved that she hadn’t rejected the image outright because we’d had to guess that she’d used quinine pills and not tonic water.

  “So everyone knows?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “A friend of mine enhanced the image to reveal you dumping the pills into the punch.”

  Joyce puffed out some air. “Technology,” she scoffed. “You can’t get away with anything these days.”

  I didn’t know if that would constitute a confession or not, so I decided to keep pushing the topic. “Why, Joyce? Why kill Heather?”

  She shrugged nonchalantly, as if I’d just asked her why she’d chosen a chocolate-chip cookie over a brownie. “It seemed . . . fair,” she said. “Eye for an eye.”

  My brow furrowed. “But what did Heather do to you?”

  “She murdered my daughter,” Joyce said, and there was such venom in her eyes, such outrageous anger that it caught me off guard.

  “I thought your daughter drowned,” I said.

  Joyce’s gaze dropped to the table, a terrible look of pain washing over her expression. When she glanced up again, her eyes were misty. “She did.”

  “But wasn’t it an accident?” I said. “Didn’t she go for a swim and get caught in a riptide?”

  “Yes,” Joyce said, nodding. “Indeed. All of that is true.”

  “Then how could Heather have had anythin
g to do with it? It’s my understanding that Heather didn’t like deep water.”

  “True,” Joyce said. “She didn’t. But that didn’t make her any less of a shark.”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t following the logic. “Did she tell Cora to go for a swim that day or something?”

  Joyce’s mouth compressed into a thin, flat line. “Yes,” she said. “In so many words, she did.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I confessed. I was surprised by how much I wanted to understand this woman’s motivations. Something about her was incredibly compelling.

  Joyce inhaled deeply, staring down at her lap as if carefully considering what to say next. At last, she lifted her chin and said, “My daughter, my precious girl—my only child—didn’t simply go for a swim that day. She committed suicide.”

  I heard a sharp intake of breath and realized it was mine.

  Joyce continued, as if I hadn’t reacted. “We found the note days later. It was in her diary. She’d been writing in great detail about the daily abuse she took from Heather. She never let Cora forget that she’d sent Heather to the hospital. They were children. How could my daughter have known those pills would make Heather so sick?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know.

  “We had no idea that Heather was bullying Cora. She never mentioned Heather, never talked about her other than shortly after Heather came home from the hospital when Cora had tried repeatedly to reach out and apologize, but Heather and her parents wouldn’t hear of it. That’s why we sent Cora to private school, to give her some distance from the event.

  “And I never gave Heather much thought beyond that. I’d felt terrible about having those pills so close at hand, but it was an accident. Something Cora had done to try to help Heather. My husband and I had apologized repeatedly, and we’d paid all the medical expenses, of course, but it seemed that wasn’t enough for Heather. She’d held a grudge from that day forward, and the summer of Cora’s junior year, she’d taken out her revenge.

  “Heather’s house was just down from the beach, so of course she discovered early on that Cora was working there as a lifeguard. Heather quickly made it a daily habit to taunt and bully her. When she discovered that Cora had a crush on one of the other lifeguards, Heather started going out with him, and they’d make out on the beach in front of Cora, just to rub it in. And when another boy asked Cora out, Heather dumped the first boy and invited the other over to her hot tub on the night of his date with Cora. He stood up my daughter, and Heather delighted in telling everyone what’d happened.”